And God said, Let the earth bring forth living souls after their kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth, after their kind. And it was so.
The sixth day opens with a command to the earth, and the dry land fills with animal life. Two questions run through the verse: what is a "living creature," and why does the making of man, later the same day, read so differently?
The same Hebrew words describe the sea creatures earlier in the chapter. One writer follows that word through the chapter.
In verse 20 God spoke of the sea creatures that have life — and the Hebrew word behind "creature" there is "nephesh," soul. Verse 21 uses the same word again: every living creature that moves is a living soul. Verse 24 says it once more of the land: "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds." So by His word God made them living souls on the earth.
The verse names three groups. One writer takes each word in turn and shows what it covers.
It is not out of place to name "cattle" first in verse 24. These are the animals that can be tamed, even if they were not tamed yet, and they suit the use of man. "Creeping thing" comes next, in its more literal sense. "Moving," used earlier, described more fully how the creatures of the waters act, so it took in not only serpents and the like but insect life. "Animal of earth" means the wild beast.
The verse also names cattle apart from the wild beasts. One writer sees a purpose in that.
We notice too that both verse 24 and verse 25 keep the "beast of the earth" separate from the "cattle." We gather from this that at the first, before sin came in, God designed certain animals for the upkeep and benefit of the man He was about to create. After sin came in, the beasts developed their wild and savage nature, while the cattle stayed fairly tame and useful to man.
The verse repeats "according to their kinds" twice. One writer sees a line God has drawn through every living thing.
Notice that each creature is "after his kind." God made the plants and the sea animals the same way on the earlier days. This establishes that species are fixed... One thing is certain: "after his kind" stamps each class of plant and animal life with its own identity. So this Scripture gives evolution no support. Yet we must be careful. In turning away from that extreme theory of unbelief, we must not fall into the opposite error of making endless classes.
Another writer points to what we can see in the animal world.
The lion does not mate with the tigress. The eagle does not pair with the goose. The wasp does not breed with the bee. The only hybrids in creation are of man's arrangement and they are sterile, and come to nothing.
The animals come at a command spoken to the ground. When God turns to make man, the words change.
The creation of man was not a mass movement, as the creation of the lower creatures was. Verse 24 describes a mass movement. It takes in the whole of living things on earth, yet there is one great exception — MAN... "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." There is no mass movement here. A single individual was in view.
Pollock quotes Genesis 2:7 from an older translation, which reads "a living soul." The difference is not only in numbers. It is in the way God acts.
The animals came out of the earth at His will. He had said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds," and it was so. It was not like that with man. God takes solemn counsel about creating him, and decides to make man in His image, after His likeness.
This verse is the first half of the sixth day. Everything in it points to what God does next.
We can compare God's work up to this point to an architect who designs and builds a palace for a royal person to live in. So God prepared all the beautiful world around: sun, moon, stars, clouds, non-living matter, plant life, animal life, with their countless astounding wonders. All of it was ready for this moment of supreme importance, when God created man — a creature He could have fellowship with.
- Word — The land creatures appear at a command spoken to the earth. No process, no ancestry — "and it was so."
- Soul — "Living creature" translates living soul. Animals are living souls made by God's word. That is why the breath God breathed into man stands out.
- Kind — Twice in one verse God sets a boundary. Each kind keeps its own identity, and no kind turns into another.
- Line — Livestock, creeping things and beasts of the earth are everyday words. They describe animals in relation to man, not a scientific list.
- Crown — This verse finishes the palace. Its royal occupant arrives before the day ends, made by God's counsel, not by a command to the ground.
And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind. And God saw that it was good.
The sixth day opens not with man but with the land filling with animals: cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts, each held inside its own kind. Two questions run through the verse: why God made these animals rather than created them, and what the phrase about kinds fixes for all of nature. (Writers below quote it as "after his kind," an older translation.)
Genesis 1 does not use the same word every time. One writer notices which word is missing here:
In the early part of the sixth day God filled the earth with living souls — beast and cattle and also creeping things. Notice that God made them. It does not say that He created them. They looked very different from the creatures of the waters and the air, yet they were still only "living souls." So the word created appears only when God first created "soul" as something distinct from matter.
The three names are not a scientific catalogue. One commentator takes each term in turn and warns against forcing science onto them:
Bringing in the herbivores, the reptiles, and the carnivores here is straining after a scientific gloss… Naming "cattle" first in verse 24 is no anachronism. These are the animals that can be tamed, even if not yet tamed, and they suit the use of man. "Creeping thing" follows in its more literal sense… "Animal of earth" means the wild beast. All of them are terms in constant use where man lives and reigns.
The verse also names cattle apart from the beast of the earth. One writer reads that as a clue about the man not yet made:
Notice too that both verse 24 and verse 25 keep the "beast of the earth" separate from the "cattle." We gather from this that at the first, before sin came in, God designed certain animals to support and benefit the man He was about to create. After sin came in, the beasts developed their wild and savage nature, while the cattle stayed tame and useful to man.
The phrase about kinds falls three times in this one verse. Writers read it as a fixed law, and one adds a warning against pushing it too far:
Notice that each creature is "after his kind." This establishes the fixity of species. Scripture does not say what those species were, or how far variety might later develop inside them. In many animal species that variety is so great it is scarcely believable. One thing is certain: "after his kind" stamps its own mark on each class of plant and animal life. So evolution finds no encouragement from this Scripture. Yet in reacting against the extreme of unbelieving theory, we must be careful not to fall into the opposite extreme of making endless classes. A common unity underlies all animal creation. Each class is specially fitted for the work it has to do. Just as plainly, though, barriers that cannot be crossed separate the classes from one another.
Another points to what anyone can watch happening in the fields and the air:
Why "after his kind"? That clearly leaves room for each species. The lion does not mate with the tigress. The eagle does not consort with the goose. The wasp does not breed with the bee. The only hybrids in creation are of man's arrangement, and they are sterile, and come to nothing.
God's verdict of "good" closes this stage of the work. The next verse opens something different:
As to the life we have by nature, God's word formed the beasts out of the ground. There the ordinary creation ended, and God pronounced the beasts good (Gen. 1:25). And then God proceeds in solemn consultation to form man as His image, as lord of all He had created, and in His likeness.
One writer also reads the three classes as a picture of mankind:
Acts 10:1-15 and verse 28 show that all these animals are typical of mankind. Domesticated animals would speak of the cultured and refined classes of men. Creeping things speak of the more despised classes, in places of lowly humiliation. The beasts of the earth remind us of men in their wild, rebellious state — a third class even more common than the other two. But this work of God on the sixth day was only a preparation for a more important work the same day.
- Made — God made these animals; He did not create them. Scripture keeps the word "created" for the first making of soul, distinct from matter.
- Kind — Three times this one verse draws the same boundary. Variety inside a kind can be great, but no creature crosses out of its kind.
- Cattle — Naming cattle apart from the wild beast points to animals designed from the start for man's use. Wildness came in after sin.
- Good — With this verdict the ordinary creation ends, approved by God before man is even mentioned.
- Then Man — The next verse turns from the ground bringing forth animals to God's own solemn counsel. The whole day was preparing for the greater work still to come.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over the whole earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth.
God does not simply speak man into being as He did the light, the seas and the animals. He stops and takes counsel with Himself. Then He makes a creature who both resembles Him and rules for Him. That raises three questions: who is the "us", what do "image" and "likeness" mean, and what happened to that rule?
Every earlier day ends with a verdict of approval. Then the pattern breaks. One writer points out that God finishes the setting before its ruler appears.
God has finished creation as creation. Now He begins to take counsel, in the most solemn way, saying that He will make man in His image and give him rule. So the creation is complete as the setting and the scene. Then God makes man in His own image and sets him over it all. Man stands entirely alone. Everything is finished, and then he is given rule over it.
Nothing before this came after God deliberating. He never said "let the earth bring forth" a man.
One thing set man apart from every other creature. God took counsel about him before He made him. What was coming was not a new animal. It was a moral being with wonderful gifts and possibilities.
The plural "us" sits beside the singular "His image" in the next verse. Commentators read this as fitting with God being three Persons in one.
That God should say, "Let US," is worthy of note. Elohim is, as we have said, a plural Name. The Old Testament does not reveal the three Persons in the Godhead. But now that God has revealed Them, we can see that the language of our chapter, given by God, fits that truth. In verse 26 it is "Our image". In verse 27 it is "His image". There is no clash here, because the eternal "Three in One" is the One speaking.
Writers differ on how much weight the wording can carry. One is more careful:
Think of the plural form of the word and how it goes with singular verbs. Would it not be close to the truth to say this? We cannot treat it as a revelation of the Trinity. Yet it is a way of speaking that shows the Spirit had that truth in mind. He is the third Person there, and He used words whose full force we could only grasp once that teaching had been revealed.
The verse uses two terms. Most writers keep them apart. One writer treats "in our image as our likeness" as saying the two are the same.
"Image" represents. "Likeness" resembles. An image does not have to look like the thing or person it stands for. The coin they showed the Lord Jesus in Matthew 22:20 may not have carried a "likeness" of Caesar, but it did carry an "image" of him. Man is made in the "image" of God. So God places him in this world to represent Him to the lower creatures, in rule and in blessing. That word is about man's position. "Likeness" points to his moral being. He can enter into relationships and carry responsibilities.
The distinction explains why one of the two words is never applied to the Son.
Scripture never says the Son is in the likeness of the invisible God. He is God. To call Him like God might suggest He is not truly God. Still, the Son is "the image of the invisible God". In His own Person He represents God in His character and moral attributes, before the whole universe.
Being God's image and holding rule belong together.
This is man as the head of creation… He was to represent God here below. Besides that, he was to be like God. He was to have a mind, a spirit able to know God, with no evil in him at all.
That rule did not survive the entry of another power.
God creates the man and the woman. Then He gives them rule "over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth". Move on to Genesis 3, and there Satan has come in. He has gained this headship for himself through the man who had fallen.
Human life is still protected on this ground, long after Eden.
Man is in the image of God, now as always, fallen or not. But sin cost him the likeness of God. When the question is the guilt of taking a man's life, the reason given is that God made him in His own image. This, it is plain, was never lost; it abides, whatever man's state.
Adam is read as a picture of Christ, with the dominion passing to Him on a far larger scale.
God created Adam in His own image and set him to rule over the works of His hands. Adam stood at the centre of a vast system placed under him. He was, the apostle says, a picture of the One who was to come. The rule of the Second Adam reaches much further than the rule of the first. He created all things Himself, so He is to inherit all He has created.
For the believer, the likeness lost in Eden is remade by a fresh act of creation.
To be true to the image, there must be moral likeness. For us that means a new creation. So Colossians 3:10 says we "have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator".
- Counsel — God deliberated before making man alone, rather than commanding the earth to produce him. He finished the stage first, then brought in its ruler.
- Image — To be God's image is to represent Him. To be His likeness is to resemble Him. Writers differ on whether the two words carry different force.
- Dominion — The image carries a job: to rule the lower creation on God's behalf.
- Ruin — The fall cost man the likeness, and the rule passed to Satan. The image remains, which is why murder counts as an offence against God.
- Recovery — The rule Adam lost belongs to Christ on a wider scale. The likeness returns in those made new after the image of their Creator.
And God created Man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
The creation account moves through light, sea, sky and living creatures. Then it stops for something different. Here God makes a creature in His own image, male and female. Commentators ask two questions here. What does "image" mean? And how much of it survived the fall, when Adam sinned?
Every earlier act of creation came by a word of command. The making of man reads differently. Writers point to the planning behind it.
God did not create man as He had done in every previous case, by a simple order from His lips. The creation of man was the subject of divine counsel. "Let us make man," etc. Notice here that man was to be, and was, made in the image and likeness of God. This is his first great difference from everything God had created before. The second is that he was to rule over all of it.
"Image" is not a word about resemblance in the first place. One writer follows the word through the Bible and points to the coin Jesus asked for.
How the Bible uses the word, in both the Old and New Testaments, seems to show that "image" represents, while "likeness" resembles… In the New Testament, the coin our Lord asked for had the image and inscription of Caesar on its face. It might have been a poor likeness, but it was an unmistakable image of the Roman emperor. It expressed his authority and represented his claim.
The second word, "likeness," adds something the first does not.
God made man, then, to represent Him to the lower creation that He put under him. But he was also made after the likeness of God; that is, he was really like God in certain important respects. Not in all respects of course, for God is infinitely holy and man was merely innocent. Still, man was God's "offspring" (Acts 17:28-29). He is a spirit being, though dressed in a body of flesh and blood. So he has intelligence and a moral sense, and these reflect what exists on an infinite scale in God Himself.
Kelly sets the verse against the theory that man rose from the animals.
How far this is from the brute finally evolving into man, a theory suggested by Satan to brutalise the race! Here is the simple yet wonderful truth. No one brought God down to the human level; God created man, and man alone, after a divine pattern.
Kelly notices that Scripture later changes the wording when it speaks of Adam's son.
Man is no longer in the likeness of God, but he is always in the image of God. For man, now as ever, fallen or not, is in the image of God; but the likeness of God was lost through sin. Seth therefore was born in Adam's own likeness, not in God's. He was like Adam fallen, not only his representative.
Commentators differ here. Others hold that both terms still stand.
The fall has not cost man either the image or the likeness of God (Gen. 9:6; James 3:9).
Both sides agree on what God Himself says about murder. This verse is the reason He guards human life.
The murderer does more than meddle with man and injure him to the worst degree. By killing a man he also defaces God's image, and God sentences him to die. Murder seizes what belongs to God, and no man has that right.
The verse shifts from "him" to "them" without changing subject.
Verse 27 says that man is twofold… the few words here show us how closely Scripture ties male and female together. The word "man" covers both, and jointly they were to have the dominion.
Jesus later answered a question about marriage by pointing back to the beginning.
Christ brings out God's glory in these things, and He shows how it was at the beginning. God did not make one man and two women, but "male and female he created them." So from the very forming of man, God's mind was clear.
God made Adam in the image. Christ is the image. Writers weigh that difference in wording.
God created man in His own image and likeness. But no one could call Christ, "who is God over all, blessed forever," the likeness of God, since He is God. But He can be the image of God, for "image" is what represents another, and Christ did this for God perfectly.
One writer says what it takes for anyone else to hold the two words together.
To be true to the image, there must be moral likeness. For us that means a new creation. So Col. 3:10 says the new self "is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator."
- Counsel — God took counsel before making man. Everything else came by command.
- Image — The word means representation. Man stands in creation as God's appointed stand-in.
- Likeness — The word means resemblance. Man has a moral and mental capacity like God's, and is God's "offspring." Commentators differ on whether sin destroyed it.
- Life — The image remains. So killing a man defaces God's own representation, and God claims the murderer's life.
- Restoration — Adam was made in the image; Christ is the image. Real likeness is regained only in the new man, renewed after Him.